A timeless being cannot create

[Bucky Ball]

I was replying to exactly what I quoted and replied to. I was replying to what you said, not to what you were replying to.

And I was replying to what you said, which was, "No one says there is a change in space-time."

it makes space and time. 

Making space-time is a change. You're making a distinction without a difference.
The state of reality changes from one without space-time to one with it.

[Belacqua]

There is no "waiting for creating". Waiting assumes time. 

"Outside" space-time is a SPATIAL concept, and there is no "outside" if space does not exist. 

I specifically said that there is no waiting for creating, for the reason you give here. 

I specifically said that "outside" is a spatial concept and doesn't apply here. 

Thank you for agreeing with me on these points.

[BryanS]

If our dimension is 3D, a higher dimension would be 5D, 1000D, 10000000D, etc.
Some place our minds cannot even comprehend; making God worthy of the title "the greatest".


In higher dimensions, thing get really crazy. Imagine needing 100000 coordinates to specify a single point on it.

We appear to be talking past each other--your response is just an alternate way of saying we can't know what these dimensions are. And that essentially is the only point I'm making--you can't say what these dimensions are where god exists, only that you believe these unknowable dimensions exist. Because you cannot know what these dimensions where god reside are, the best you can do is to use your imagination. Imagination is not proof.

[Bucky Ball]

I don't know if you want to put in a lot of time on this. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. But all these questions have been worked on for a long time, and there are very involved and careful answers. You can be sure all the obvious questions ["if everything has a cause, then what caused god?"] have serious answers, though surprisingly few people have bothered to look into them. I think you'll find in fact that a lot of people prefer to mock the whole issue rather than learn anything at all.


If you go to this site and start clicking links, it will give a taste of how careful explanations have been offered. 

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1044.htm#article1

Seriously ... you offer Aquinas ? He who could not think outside his Medieval world-view ? 
There is nothing in the thought of Aquinas that offers ANY unique advancement in human thought. Nothing. 
(Except that maybe he pointed out that the reason the serpent went to Eve first, was that the "light of reason shone less brightly in her". LOL)
They are worthless explanations. ALL his explanations are based on (in virtually every sentence) what he observed on the macro level in this universe. 
He didn't even get that is invalid. The reason he SHOULD look into all of this, is there ARE no valid explanations. There are no serious answers. They ALL have been debunked.

[Bucky Ball]

There is no "waiting for creating". Waiting assumes time. 

"Outside" space-time is a SPATIAL concept, and there is no "outside" if space does not exist. 

I specifically said that there is no waiting for creating, for the reason you give here. 

I specifically said that "outside" is a spatial concept and doesn't apply here. 

Thank you for agreeing with me on these points.

You said creation (a process) is "making" space-time. Making is a process, (which requires time, in place, a priori. It's still incoherent / meaningless.
The process of making time cannot "start" if time is not already present.

[LadyForCamus]

4. It's a little ridiculous to say "it's false to say God knows things". That's a bit of word salad you are concocting there. I'll just give you a reference https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_...rt_359.cfm

It's not word salad, but it is unfamiliar. I found it difficult to grasp at first. 

I looked at the Blue Letter Bible web site. No doubt you're correct: most Christians probably think of omniscience in the way he describes, if they bother to think about it at all. 

If they went on to get a doctorate in Thomist epistemology, they would react to that web site's description by saying, "That's OK as far as it goes," or "That's right in a manner of speaking." Most Christians probably don't think about the difference between uni-vocal, equi-vocal, and analogous words, so they would just assume that the verb in "God knows X" and the verb in "I know X" refer to exactly the same activity.

---

I'm at a loss to see how creation can occur with no act from God. 

Yeah, I can't give a good answer to this either. I suspect that there are certain prerequisites necessary to grasp the explanation, and I don't have them yet. I'm no expert.

At this point I only know some analogies and some warnings about what NOT to say. Those might be useful while we hunt down more complete explanations. 

First, it's wrong to think of God making the world by analogy to a watchmaker making a watch, or an artist painting a portrait. 

An artist will spend a certain amount of time making the portrait, and after it's finished the artist and the picture have separate existences. The painting can exist long after the painter dies. 

A better analogy is to your face in a mirror. Your face creates an image in the mirror, but as soon as you go away, the image disappears. We could say that the presence of your face sustains the existence of the image in the mirror. This is how God is said to create world. The beginning point -- if there was one -- is not the important thing. The continued reflection is what matters. 

As for if God can be said to act, or to do something, this may be just a language issue. 

Currently I have a vase of lilies in my entry hall. The hall smells nice, thanks to the lilies. Is it appropriate to say that the lilies acted, or did something, to make the hall smell nice? Or is it better to say that the hall just smells nice because of the way the lilies are? If you want to say that the lilies acted (in some way) then I'd be more willing to accept that God acted. 

Similarly, does the sun illuminate the earth because of an act it takes? Or just because of the way the sun is? If it's OK to say that the sun acts to illuminate the earth, then it's probably OK to say that God acts to create the world. Analogically. 

With these images in mind, we can think of our old friend Bonum est diffusivum sui -- the good spreads itself. 

Remember that God is said to be the Good. Goodness itself, the Form of the Good. But a goodness that keeps to itself is a contradiction in terms. You can't have a good which is selfish. So by its nature, the Good must diffuse, or emanate, goodness. Not by grabbing handfuls and throwing it out, or by looking around, feeling sorry for people, and divvying it out, but by an impersonal emanation.

I would argue that those are not good analogies. Your face, a mirror, the flowers, the air in the hallway, and the sun are all things that exist in space and time. God does not. Time and physical change are required for a flower to smell like like a flower, or for the sun to emit light. OTOH, god is (allegedly) unchanging, immaterial, and “outside” space-time. These characteristics are antithetic to the characteristics of the objects in your analogies.

[Anomalocaris]

The analogy is basically this "if we ignore all that we can verify, and what fate tended to await those spoken of without evidence or verification, then you can never say I am wrong, therefore you must credit me with the possibility of being right on par with all those what passed steps we've taken to verify, whenever I feel like saying anything".

[Belacqua]

Seriously ... you offer Aquinas ? 

It's difficult to have a conversation with you, because you approach metaphysics as if it were pro wrestling. Everything is a fight with you.

The OP is asking how Christian theology explains God's creation. To understand that, we need to understand Thomas Aquinas. We are looking into how a large group of other people think.

I have not said that Christian theology is correct.

[Belacqua]

I would argue that those are not good analogies. Your face, a mirror, the flowers, the air in the hallway, and the sun are all things that exist in space and time. God does not. Time and physical change are required for a flower to smell like like a flower, or for the sun to emit light. OTOH, god is (allegedly) unchanging, immaterial, and “outside” space-time. These characteristics are antithetic to the characteristics of the objects in your analogies.

Yeah, like all analogies, these are limited. They are meant to illustrate only one point: that we can talk about creation in two ways. 

First kind of creation: that involving activity and effort on the part of the creator, which leads to an object with independent existence.

Second kind: that involving no effort by the creator, which leads to a condition that continues to be dependent on the creator. 

Beyond that, you're certainly right -- the analogies tell us nothing about eternity or divine situations.

[Bucky Ball]

Seriously ... you offer Aquinas ? 

It's difficult to have a conversation with you, because you approach metaphysics as if it were pro wrestling. Everything is a fight with you.

The OP is asking how Christian theology explains God's creation. To understand that, we need to understand Thomas Aquinas. We are looking into how a large group of other people think.

I have not said that Christian theology is correct.

Actually he didn't ask that at all. It's how you mistranslated it, into your world-view.

OP :
I think there's a logical argument to be made against God's existence here on the basis of incompatible properties. God is outside time, we're told. He's not only eternal (existing forever) but also unaffected by temporal changes.

He gets the problem perfectly. Being "unaffected by temporal changes" is not the problem. 
Using temporal concepts and ascribing then TO THE GOD, IS the problem. Creating and making time are temporal concepts and cannot be ascribed to a timeless being. 
It's as simple as that. They are incompatible and incoherent, just like a round square is incoherent. 
Aquinas didn't even get the problem.